What AI Really Is, Whose Making It Happen and What It Means For The Future: My conversation with Cade Metz

When Hal asked Astronaut David Bowman to “open the pod bay doors,” it was as if our most primal fear of machines came rushing headlong into the 20th century. Today, in our 21st-century world, we understand the basics of the artificial intelligence behind HAL.

We see on display every day our interaction with Siri and Alexa, our reliance on algorithms in flying our planes and soon our self-driving cars.

It’s the full blossoming of the promised brave new world.

But AI is just the Internet in1995. While it dominates every conversation about technology, commerce, the workplace and the economy today, there is an awful lot of misinformation.

Its impact can be felt in manufacturing, retail, healthcare, automotive, robotics, finance and science, as well as defense and national security.

The academic progress of AI is taking place every day in places like Stanford, Google, Amazon and Facebook. And the proverbial elephant in the room with respect to AI is always China and its deep, rich and no holds barred commitment to be the world leader in AI


But nothing beats understanding AI’s future like seeing how we got where we are today, who are the people making it happen and what it portents for its future.


That is what NY Times journalist Cade Metz does in his book Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought AI to Google, Facebook, and the World 

My conversation with Cade Metz:

Imagine If We All Could Have Esther Wojcicki As A Parent

The evidence is overwhelming that in our schools today, the successful curriculums are those that are directed toward deeper learning, project-based learning, and social and emotional learning.

Learners that feel empowered and hands-on, that collaborate and learn empathy are the ones who excel academically.

So why shouldn't the same be true of parenting? The recent cheating scandal certainly shows the other extreme. What happens amidst helicopter parenting run amuck, of parents not having faith in the innate abilities and independence of their kids.

Maybe you don’t have to let your 11 or 12-year-old fly off to France and change planes by themselves as my guest did, but giving them responsibly at home from a young age is essential.

Few people understand this better than Esther Wojcicki. Esther understands not in some abstract white paper kind of way, but by having raised three incredibly successful daughters;  Ann, the co-founder of 23 and me, Susan is the CEO of YouTube and Janet is a distinguished doctor and professor of pediatrics.

Esther is in her own right an amazing success story. A formidable voice on behalf of journalism and media literacy, Esther Wojcicki is the founder of the Media Arts programs at Palo Alto High School and serves as vice chair of Creative Commons and was instrumental in the launch of the Google Teacher Academy.  Her new book is How to Raise Successful People: Simple Lessons for Radical Results.

My conversation with Esther Wojcicki:

Google

It is the behemoth of the digital age.  It has steamrolled over traditional media companies and yet it's run by engineers who strive to be at the cutting of technology.  It is a distributor as well as a creator of content. The company is Google and we get our first look inside what really makes it tick in Ken Auletta's new book Googled: The End of the World As We Know It Auletta is one of the most astute media journalists, a long time columnist for The New Yorker, he now turns his attention to nothing less than the future of media.

My conversation with Ken Auletta:

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